Name: Habbo (http://www.habbo.com)
Description: Habbo is one of the largest teen online communities and is live in 32 countries around the world. Here, teenagers can create their own virtual character and interact with other active players in the community. Habbo provides the means for self-expression, creativity, fun and social interaction within a safe and positive space.
Monthly active users: 6.8 million people, 11.1 million unique vistors
[Edit: these stats were only for one of Habbo's 16 active domains (see comment below); for the entire network, MAU is approximately 6.8 million people and over 11.1 million unique visitors]
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What works:
Virtual community engages users conceptually
It’s fairly easy to get sucked into the Habbo world and be enticed to return, especially as you grow your friends list with other Habbo members. Currently, you can find thousands of members online at any given moment, spread throughout numerous rooms and ready to interact. Everything is social in Habbo; there’s really not much for you to do if you plan on being a wallflower. Even if you want to play a game, you have to join forces with other players and work together to take out the other team (and one of the games– a snowball fight– is addictive enough that I actually signed in once just to play it. And I’m 7 years past teenage-status eligibility). And because everything revolves around interaction with other online members, there’s more opportunity to show off, and thus more incentive to acquire virtual goods.
The snowball fight game in Habbo is simple to play and easy to learn and embarrassingly addictive.
Club membership provides things users want
You don’t have to be in the Habbo Club to be a VIP, but being in the Habbo Club pretty much gives you a free pass to being a VIP. Exclusivity and status are always big draws, and Habbo makes both of those easy to obtain and heavily promotes the Habbo Club through the site and community.
What could be better:
Better ease of transition/introduction to the purchasing model
Habbo technically has a dual-currency system (pixels and coins), but it’s more accurate to say theirs is a single-currency (coins) as the items which a user can purchase using pixels is disappointing in both quantity and quality.
Left: the pixels store. Items cost either 120 (like this stool) or 160 pixels, and none of them are attractive. Right: my unimpressive room 280 pixels later (the table and stools came with the room).
It’s true that teens don’t need that much of a nudge to spend money and that in theory, limiting what a player can do without buying currency should result in more players buying currency– but for teens who can’t buy currency, or at least not right away, these limitations are discouraging and could actually result in the loss of new users.
Better promotion of the offers system as alternative payment
The Habbo card is apparently readily available and easily obtainable, but most teens prefer instantaneous transaction. But most teens don’t have their own credit card, and while they usually have their own (parent-funded) cell phone (or access to a landline home phone), Habbo makes it very clear that any unauthorized payments will result in the Habbo account in question being permanently banned. Which means any teen who relies on a parent as an online payment source (but whose parent isn’t exactly keen to approve spending money on pixelated virtual goods) has limited or no opportunity to really get into the Habbo world– unless they complete offers.
The offers alternative, however, isn’t promoted at all in Habbo. It’s listed at the very bottom of the payment options page, ranking only above “Money Order”. And even when teens finally find their way to the offers page, therein lie more obstacles.
Offers more suited to teens
Offers are supposed to be an “alternative payment” option, the “alternative” usually referring to “not having to spend money”. In a teenager’s case, offers would be the way to obtain currency in the absence of possessing a credit card– yet all of the offers available to Habbo users require a credit card submission (or a paid subscription to a mobile service), and what’s more, those purchase-required offers are typically for a completely different demographic.
The default offers page reflects the overall discrepancy between Habbo's intended demographic (teens) and the offer store's intended demographic (adults). The most obvious example of this is an offer for wine club membership under "Gifts & Gourmet".
In reality, there are so many offers in existence that don’t require any purchases: quizzes, e-mail submits, registration for another site or game, and surveys, just to name a few. The payouts aren’t high, but these are perfect for users who want to obtain currency but can’t do it through mobile or direct payments.
What to keep in mind:
-If you have a specific audience in mind, know that audience, and know it well. Habbo (unlike so many adults who just don’t understand) gets teens. They like to talk, so Habbo has countless visual chat rooms for teens to mingle and say what’s on their mind. They’re still fresh in their aspirations to become a star, so Habbo heavily integrates the “American Idol” concept into the community. And they like to stand out, so Habbo offers for sale “effects” which last around an hour and help put the spotlight (literally, in one instance) on a Habbo user in a crowded room. Because Habbo takes the time to research and provide what their audience likes and wants, they’re able to retain active users and appeal to new ones.
-Don’t shut out users who can’t or just don’t want to buy virtual currency right away– especially if you utilize a dual-currency system. The whole point of dual currency is to allow your users to still have a good time and stay active without having to spend real money in the hopes that as they become more saturated with the game or community, they will eventually be motivated to spend. Without that saturation period, however, you’re likely to lose them. Let your free currency actually be worth something, even if it means making a virtual good cost 3 days’ worth of play.
Lora, thanks for the review. One correction: the QuantCast audience figures you quoted were for habbo.com, which is one of the 16 active communities. Due to the local nature of the service, the audience is split among domains, and you can see the *global* audience in QuantCast’s Habbo Network: 6.8M people, 11.1M “unique visitors”. US audience is also slightly higher overall.